I’ve been working on a small project called 3Dos — a low-poly 3D renderer targeting MS-DOS and VGA Mode 13h (320×200, 256 colors).

The renderer currently supports:
● Triangle rasterization with backface culling
● Ordered dithering using a 4×4 Bayer matrix
● Double buffering
● Simple low-poly models

Going back to DOS-era graphics has been relaxing after spending quite a bit of time with Vulkan. No boilerplate or abstractions, just putting a pixel at 0xA000.

Github: https://github.com/xms0g/3Dos

I saw a post about a Windows 7 rig, and someone commented on how odd it was that Windows 7 was considered retro, and I kind of agree.

When I first got into this hobby, I thought it was strange that XP was considered retro. I know everyone has their own opinions and thoughts on what constitutes “retro,” but I feel like anything pre-Windows XP seems retro to me, while everything after XP, up to around 2014, kind of fits into its own era.

The reason I picked 2014 is because, to me, that's around when computing really started to change again. We were shifting from physical media toward digital downloads and streaming, from desktops and bulky laptops toward thin laptops, tablets and mobile devices, and aesthetically from Aero/chrome/transparency and skeuomorphism toward the flat, minimalist design language we have today.

In this subreddit, the mods specify that anything 20 years old counts as retro, and that's as good a rule as any. But my problem with defining retro purely by age is that the definition will eventually creep into the future. By that logic, eventually we'll be calling something “retro” simply because enough time has passed.

That's not really how we approach history. We don't eventually start calling medieval history “ancient history” just because the Middle Ages happened a long time ago. We have clear delineations between ancient history, medieval history, early modern history, modern history, etc. based on the characteristics that defined the eras. To me, Windows 7 is just too far removed from even DOS and feels strange to call both retro.

I feel like the era from roughly 2001–2014 deserves its own label — something like “Early Digital Computing.” To me, it feels distinctly different from both what came before it and what came after it.

Again, this is all totally subjective, and I'm sure there are people who were doing plenty of computing in the '70s and '80s who find it strange that anyone would lump '90s computing in with all of that. And of course there's vintage computing, which is even further back and is a whole separate era in its own right.

I know my little concept board is not exact in any way. There are blurred lines and exceptions to every rule. I just thought it would be an interesting discussion, so I figured I'd share my thoughts and see what everyone else thinks. Much of this comes from your own experience with computers. I first started using computers in mid-90s using DOS and Windows 95 which probably explains my perspective somewhat.

I am in no way invalidating one era over another. I think it is all awesome. I have plenty from every era.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

Cubase on the Atari ST saved songs as big-endian dumps of its own memory structures, stale pointers and all. I worked out the format from real songs and from Cubase's own MIDI exports, and wrote a converter that runs in the browser (Python in WebAssembly, nothing uploaded). It writes DAWproject, the open project format modern DAWs import, so the whole arrangement survives, not just the notes. Link in the comments.

Made a post a while ago about not being able to install the integrated SiS video drivers on an old HP Pavilion (It would just BSOD) So someone suggested I just install a video card. So I found an ATI Rage IIC PCI card and installed it but I cannot get the drivers to work! There's no setup.exe file, So I had to manually point device manager to the .inf file, but it insists the generic Windows driver is better and won't let me install the ATi driver! What's going on here???

Around this time, I saw a video online that I'd like to locate again. It was an intel concept video of the utility of a single device that formed the center of your digital life. It was shot in a similar way to AT&T's "You will" campaign from the 90s. It followed a person from the time they woke up and undocked a small, thin, rectagular device that was their entire digital device. They carried it into the kitchen and docked it and began to use it to access media. They go to work and it docked becomes their desktop computer. Later, it becomes other needed objects. Does anyone know a site that might have archived this? It's been dropped from youtube as far as I can see, but someone here may know where it might still be.

Where can I find a replacement retention bracket for AGP slots? Some of the brackets on my boards broke and I'd like to have some on hand for peace of mind.

I wanted to give my Atari Portfolio something new to do while keeping its original keyboard and LCD at the centre of the experience.

The result is the Portfolio AI Interface: an ESP32-S3 expansion module connected through the original Atari Serial Interface and an RS-232 level converter. A small DOS client runs from an apfRAM memory card.

It supports typed and spoken AI conversations, camera image descriptions and background synthwave radio. The AI runs online through the OpenAI API; the Portfolio provides the terminal interface.

Getting the serial communication, speech playback and tiny-screen layout working together took some iteration. I also designed an enclosure to match the original expansion modules, including a speaker grille inspired by the Portfolio.

The Terminator 2 connection was impossible to resist.

Build and demo:

https://youtu.be/itMtJ-JYX_g

Code and wiring:

https://github.com/daxx2k/atari-portfolio-ai

Hey all!

Like many of you, I love retro hardware, but building and debugging on real breadboards can sometimes be a bit of a slog—wiring mistakes are tricky to spot, probing signals is tedious, and changing firmware means constantly reprogramming chips.

To get around this, I built WireSim, a wire-level, logic-level digital logic simulator designed specifically for software and hardware enthusiasts who want a super-fast, observable feedback loop.

🚀 What is WireSim?

• Real Chip Models: Chips are modelled with real pins joined into nets, and the simulation advances in half clock cycles.
• Bus Contention: Buses can float or fight, making contention a first-class logic state.
• Fast Turnaround: Change a line of assembly, rebuild, and watch the whole machine run the new code within seconds.
• Physical Reality: Once a computer works here, the assembled binaries and wiring definitions are fully compatible with physical builds.

💻 Included Reference Machine: BenEater6502

The repo comes out-of-the-box with a model of Ben Eater's breadboard 6502 computer!

• Runs Microsoft BASIC and WozMon (via the vendored msbasic submodule).
• Includes a W65C22 VIA, a W65C51N ACIA (bridged to a TCP port for the serial console), an HD44780 LCD, and 16 KiB of SRAM.
• Supports hardware-specific BASIC commands like LCDCMD, LCDPRINT, and BEEP.

🤖 Built with AI-Assisted Workflows

An interesting side note: the core simulator and initial 6502/UART logic were written in C#, but after realizing C++ offered roughly double the simulation speed, the whole thing was ported. Since C++ can be tedious, the repository heavily leverages Claude Code with custom skills and instructions in .claude/ and AGENTS.md to help generate devices from datasheets and wire up machines from specifications.

Check out the repo here: https://github.com/Seramis/WireSim

It includes a full VS Code dev container (with CMake, Ninja, Verilator, and cc65) so you can get it up and running without wrestling with toolchain installations.

I'd love to hear your thoughts, answer any questions, or see what you think about using simulation for hardware prototyping!